Have you ever wondered about the mind of a serial killer? As we navigate this eerie journey into the psyche of the infamous Wichita murderer, we promise to shed light on the chilling life and crimes of Dennis Rader, better known as BTK. We will examine BTK's case from the perspective of former FBI profiler John Douglas to venture deep into the darkness of a killer's mind, examining the motivations and methods that powered Rader's monstrous deeds. From his first interaction with Wichita PD in 1979 to the formation of the "Ghostbusters" task force, Douglas' perspective is an insightful exploration of one of the most notorious criminal cases in history.
Venture further into the shadows as we dissect each terrifying aspect of the BTK strangler's reign of terror in Wichita. With the help of Douglas' profiling and insights from David Belkovitz, another notorious serial killer, we unravel the disturbing fantasies, obsessions, and control mechanisms that drove BTK to commit his heinous crimes. Get ready to face the man behind the murders, his fascination with law enforcement, and the terrifying truth about his need for domination. Prepare yourselves, listeners; this is not a journey for the faint-hearted but one that promises to illuminate the darkest corners of the human mind.
Have you ever wondered about the mind of a serial killer? As we navigate this eerie journey into the psyche of the infamous Wichita murderer, we promise to shed light on the chilling life and crimes of Dennis Rader, better known as BTK. We will examine BTK's case from the perspective of former FBI profiler John Douglas to venture deep into the darkness of a killer's mind, examining the motivations and methods that powered Rader's monstrous deeds. From his first interaction with Wichita PD in 1979 to the formation of the "Ghostbusters" task force, Douglas' perspective is an insightful exploration of one of the most notorious criminal cases in history.
Venture further into the shadows as we dissect each terrifying aspect of the BTK strangler's reign of terror in Wichita. With the help of Douglas' profiling and insights from David Belkovitz, another notorious serial killer, we unravel the disturbing fantasies, obsessions, and control mechanisms that drove BTK to commit his heinous crimes. Get ready to face the man behind the murders, his fascination with law enforcement, and the terrifying truth about his need for domination. Prepare yourselves, listeners; this is not a journey for the faint-hearted but one that promises to illuminate the darkest corners of the human mind.
Welcome to the Murder Book. I'm your host, keara, and it has been a while since a few weeks since I have presented a new case. I have been busy with other projects, but I am going to start a new case, but I'm going to try to do it a little bit differently. I'm going to be talking about the hunt for Wichita serial killer known as BTK or Dennis Rader, that took 30 years into his capture. I'm going to tell it from the perspective of one of the FBI agents that for many years profiled BTK and he contributed to the hunt of this killer.
Speaker 1:Everything started in 1974. John Douglas was around 28 years old. He was working at the FBI's Milwaukee office and talking to some detectives in the police department. He started listening to some of the stories and one of the interesting cases that they were talking about was about a serial killer in Wichita, kansas, who called himself the BTK Strangler. In 1974, the term serial killer was not used. That was not coined until Special Agent Racer and other profiler colleague of John Douglas coined the term. But they only knew about this killer was his initials BTK. They were asking what did they stand for and at that moment this elusive killer starts getting into John Douglas's head. They wanted to know more information.
Speaker 1:This is the time frame that John Douglas and Wessler started on a quest to understand what motivated someone who seemed to enjoy perpetrating acts of violence upon complete strangers. And this was what makes serial killers so difficult to identify, because they rarely killed anyone whom they knew intimately and their crimes often appear to have no motive. So it was Douglas and Wessler's personal mission to find out what drove these vicious, heartless killers. He wanted to know how they view the world, how they perpetrated their crimes, how they selected their victims. And one thing that he said as a go was if I can get answers to those questions, then I will be able to help police around the country identify serial killers long before they got the chance to leave a long bloody trail in their wake.
Speaker 1:So John Douglas went to the Milwaukee Public Library and started locating some old newspapers from Wichita, and he started reading every word that had been written about the quadruple homicide that this killer had committed in January 1974. And he learned that BTK stood for bind, torture and kill. This was his self-chosen nickname that perfectly summed up his MO. He somehow managed to waltz his way into the victim's home, tie them up, torture them in the same way a schoolboy might torment an insect and then, when it suited him, he killed them. And he was a killer that he didn't care who he killed. He would claim the lives of men, women and children.
Speaker 1:So John Douglas was busy working on his cases robbery, fugitives, kidnapping cases. He was in graduate school studying psychology and at the same time he was trying to try to think of BTK in his spare time. Who the hell is BTK? What makes a guy like this do what he does? What makes him tick? And then at the same time the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, or BSU, was operated out of the FBI Academy in Quantico, virginia, and they would transfer John Douglas to BSU and he would spend his days profiling the minds of these violent serial offenders full time. And he started as an instructor first and he began teaching courses in hostage negotiation, criminal psychology. And one day, on March 1978, he was researching another case. He dug up what he could on BTK and he was surprised to learn that since 1974 he had somehow still eluded police, now claimed responsibility for seven murders. By this time in 1978 he had already sent two taunting letters to local newspapers. The first one was in October 1974, the second was on February 1978 and he was daring the police to catch him.
Speaker 1:By 1979, john Douglas was in the midst of his serial murder research program. He was conducting a series of in-depth interviews with around 36 serial killers Charles Manson, arthur Bremer, richard Speck, john Wayne Gacy, david Belkovitz, aka the Somersam, and many others, and these were men that have killed three or more victims, with some sort of cooling off period between the crimes. And then in 1979, the fall of 1979, the fall ran in his office and it was a homicide detective with the Wichita Police Department and they asked if they could help them with a case that they had been working on and he said, sure, tell me about it. And then he said, well, we got a serial killer out here and goes by the name of BTK. Have you heard of him? And he said, well, only what I have read in the papers. So the detective walked Douglas through the BTK murders. They detailed the twist, the turns of the investigation and they reiterated his claim that police would welcome any assistance the FBI's BSU could lend. And they even invited him to come to Wichita. And Douglas said well, I can give you a day and bring everything that you got, we can go through it, and then I'll put an analysis together for you.
Speaker 1:So Wichita police Lieutenant Bernie Drowoski came to Quantico to visit Douglas and he showed him his cleansing photos across the table. They went murder by murder and Douglas said well, the only caveat is that you can't tell me about any potential suspects you might be looking at. And he said well, we don't have any suspects. And so John Douglas started looking at all the photos, and the fact that this detective traveled all this way to seek his help told him one thing that the Wichita police department was grasping for anyone, anything that could help steer them in a direction that they have not thought of. And Detective Lieutenant Drowoski said we normally solve our murders in Wichita, but this one is not like the others.
Speaker 1:So at this time, douglas and his colleagues were trying to acquire answers for the formula, which was why plus how equals who? And they believe that that would help them crack hard cases. And one of the questions that they would ask is why would someone want to kill multiple victims over a period of days and months and, in the case of BTK, many years? Why do they target certain types of victims? How do they prepare for their crimes? What sort of impact do their actions have on them? Are they born to kill? Did some childhood trauma warp them, causing them to turn violent? Or is it the homicidal appetite, you know, a combination of these two factors? What factors led to their identification and arrest? Did they get sloppy? Was the capture a result of stellar detective work? So they have an interview protocol and this interview protocol had thousands of questions. It was like 57 pages long. But by doing this protocol questionnaire it will provide them with insight from this killers and to try to get inside the minor for severe killer.
Speaker 1:So from what police have been able to piece together from BTK's crime series, it was clear that this killer maintained a high level of control over the victims and this form of dominance over another person appeared to be a big turn on for BTK. He tied his victims up, he used rope or whatever else was handy at the scene when it came time to kill. His preferred method involved either a garot or a plastic bag tied over the head. He often arranged the bodies of the victims and poses reminiscent of a detective magazine cover and before fleeing he would sometimes masturbate on or near his victims and one of the things that John Douglas emphasized in the paper that he wrote when he did the analysis of the case in 79, he emphasized to the police that BTK's ego would eventually lead to his downfall. And they said your job should be to stroke his ego in public whenever possible. Show him the respect to grave in the hopes that he would continue to communicate with them. The way Douglas saw it for him it was that the best chance that law enforcement had to get a handle on this killer was to keep him talking. Exactly what police did with his analysis he had no idea, because then he had to go and jump to another case. But he said hey, I'm a phone call away if you need me again. So this is in 79. So years past. This is October 1984.
Speaker 1:The Wichita police paid a second visit. This is seven years since BTK's last known murder and the police still were not any closer to arrest anybody. So the Wichita police department had recently formed an eight person BTK task force known as the Ghostbusters. The longtime chief was retiring but before leaving his post he wanted the case solved and closed. So he assembled a team of six crack investigators, a captain and a lieutenant, and instructed them to reopen the files shift through the amounts of crime scene photos, witness statements, police reports, autopsy reports and even the analysis that John Douglas gave them on the case years before.
Speaker 1:After three months they were desperate to ensure that the investigation didn't hit another brick wall. So they reach out again to the BSU and they ask if John Douglas's unit could offer any assistance. So after a week, two task force detectives his name was Paul Dodson, the other one was Mark Richardson they were sent to the FBI Academy and they have pounds of crime scene photos. They have various reports. So they met with John Douglas at the forensic science building and he at this point he was overseeing six criminal profilers. So the BSU has expanded a lot.
Speaker 1:And so he asked them to go into the conference room because he had some colleagues waiting to work with the detectives and so they had a. They ready a slight projector and Douglas explained just how far they have come with the criminal profiling program since the last visit of that Wichita homicide detective in late 70s, right like in 78, 79. And for the next eight hours they outlined the basic facts of the case. They described the victims, the communication the killer had sent, medical examiners reports, different neighborhoods where the murders had occurred and John Douglas listened to the presentation and he felt that after they finished the presentation he had more questions than answers. And they have been already six years that passed since he had written to police about this murder. So he started ingesting all the information with four other colleagues and they said you need to give us a few days while we process all this information. So they met again a few days later with the detectives and they provided the detectives with a detailed verbal profile of what they have concluded about BTK, given the limited information that they had at that point, along with some proactive ideas that they believed might work to flush him out.
Speaker 1:In 1987, this task force, the Ghostbusters, was disbanded because BTK was only one of thousands of cases, so they needed to move on. Now John Douglas retired in June of 1995 and they have not even identified who BTK was and he started to wonder is he dead? Has he been jailed for another crime? Has he moved away from Vegeta? Was there another reason to explain why he had gone underground? And then one evening in March of 2004, a former colleague of his telephone, and so when he picked up the phone he talked to someone and he hung up the phone and he looked at his wife and said he's back. Btk is back.
Speaker 1:So the news that BTK had resurfaced and had just sent the local newspaper a packet containing a photo snapped of a murder he had committed in 1991. He's excited, john Douglas, but it also disappointed him because his God told him that it would be just a matter of time before he trips himself up and police will capture him. But at the same time, because he was no longer employed by the FBI, because he retired, he would have to wait years before he would have a chance to ever get a crack at interviewing him, because he doesn't have those connections anymore. So over the next 11 months, vegeta police used a technique that John Douglas tried in the 1980s to solve another murder. This murder was in San Diego and basically involved creating what he called a supercup, the kind of law enforcement officer who could stand up at press conferences, talk directly to the unsub. In eventually building up such a rapport with the suspect that he allows himself to take chances and risk he wouldn't take otherwise, which was exactly what happened with BTK, he left his guard down. He began to believe that he and the police were, in a sense, comrades and colleagues. He made the mistake of believing that he could trust them to tell the truth, and that led to his downfall.
Speaker 1:In February 2005, police arrested Dennis Rader, a seemingly mild-mannered married church going farther off to two grandchildren. He was a municipal employee. He worked for the city of Vegeta as a compliance officer, handing out tickets to people when their loans grew too high or they held a garage sale without obtaining the necessary permits, and he had continued to kill. His body count had climbed to 10 victims. Six months after his arrest, rader spoke at his televised sentencing hearing and he detailed very calmly whom he had killed and how.
Speaker 1:But John Douglas, of course, wanted the why. For John Douglas, btk was one of the very first serial killers that he encountered, whose appetite for death set him on a journey to find out more. Because his career was as long as John Douglas's, he has been always there or was working on the periphery. So one thing that John Douglas decided to do is I want to know more about BTK because I want to write a book about him. So for years of study and analysis that he had done on serial killers, nothing about Dennis Rader makes sense to him. He wanted to know who was this guy? Why did killing mean so much to him? How could he be married, raised two kids and also be such a heartless monster, six sexual perfect? Why did he go underground for so many years? How was it that this killer could be elected president of his church? What was no one able to glimpse his real identity? Is there anything that could have been done during all those years that would have led sooner to his arrest? Why did he finally come out of hiding and get caught? So Douglas at that point decided to write a book. He didn't know how rough this journey was going to be, because he has to cover a span of at least three decades. So John Douglas have to go to the beginning, to where it started, and he starts to look at when two detectives from the Wichita Police Department came to see him and the FBI after they have read his 1979 analysis of the BTK case and wanted to discuss the latest development in his research that would allow them to finally nap this killer. They don't want to profile the one and more techniques and that's it, thank you. He started to look of where pretty much started and the facts behind BTK's killing went like this In January 1974, he strangled a man named Joseph Otero, age 38.
Speaker 1:He killed his wife, julie, 34, his son Joey, age 9. The partially nude body of the daughter, josephine, age 11, was discovered hanging from a water pipe in the basement and there was a large amount of semen on her leg. In October the local paper received a detailed letter from someone claiming to have killed the Otero family. In March 1977, shirley Vayan, 24, found strangle with her hands and feet bound. The killer had locked her children in the bathroom. In all likelihood he would have killed them, but was scared away by a ringing telephone.
Speaker 1:In December 1977, btk telephoned a police dispatcher to inform police about his latest murder, 25-year-old Nancy Fox, whose body was found strangle on her bed. The next month the killer sent a letter about the killing to the local paper, although it wasn't discovered for almost two weeks. In February 1978, he sent another letter to a local TV station. He was gloating over his killing of Vayan and Fox, along with another unnamed victim. In April 1979, he waited inside the home of 63-year-old woman, but eventually he left before she returned home. Not long afterwards he sent his intended target a letter. He informed her that he had chosen her as his next victim but had hoped up to not to kill her after growing tired of waiting for her to arrive home. Now the local cops have exhausted their leads and investigators have managed. In those years since Douglas did his review of the case and analysis, they have managed to link another homicide to him. In April 1974, three months after the Otero killings, catherine Bright, a 21-year-old assembly line worker, was stabbed to death in her home. Despite being shot twice in the head, her 19-year-old brother survived the attack.
Speaker 1:The detectives briefing Douglas believed that having another case to link to BTK, especially one with a survivor, might help shed some new light on the suspect responsible for the murders. According to John Douglas, the Wichita Police Department was regarded widely in law enforcement circles as one of the most progressive in the nation. So Douglas was pretty confident that the police had not botched this investigation. But the killer was still on the loose in this worry. So the question now is why he had stopped killing. What had happened to him? But he had become pretty much a ghost, which was why the task force created by Wichita Police a few months before, in July 1984, had been named the Ghostbusters. So Douglas thought that the only way they could catch this ghost would be to find some way to flush him out, to develop some sort of a strategy to force him out into the light where he could finally see him. So he started looking for a criminal profile that he wrote for the police back in 1979. He couldn't find it at that moment so he thought well, maybe send the office.
Speaker 1:And John Douglas remember that in 1981 he used BTK to help pry information out of the head of one of the nation's most notorious serial killers. And it happened in an interrogation room deep inside the Attica Correctional Facility and he was with fellow FBI profiler Bob Restler, and the guy that they were talking to was David Belkovitz, aka the son of Sam. They were asking David to help up with their criminal profiling study, which involved that 57 page interview questionnaire, and some of the questions that they were asking was what was his motive? Was there a trigger that sent him off on his murderous spree? What was his early childhood like? How did he select his victims? Did he ever visit the gravesites of his victims? How closely did he follow the press coverage of his crimes? Because these answers would help them better understand the killers that they were hunting, and so they thought that interviewing Belkovitz. It was going to give them better ideas, not only for other serial killers, but it would eventually give some inspiration to work with some ideas regarding BTK's profile.
Speaker 1:So one of the things that they did was the following they knew that killers that they have interviewed they longed to have their ego stroke. And so suddenly John said to David Belkovitz you know, david, there's a serial killer out in Kansas, a guy responsible for the death of at least six people, who idolizes you. He's mentioned you in the letters that he writes to the police. He fancies himself just like you. He even wants a name like you and, of course, belkovitz. The meaner change. He was curious. His look of boredom was replaced with a smirk, and so he looked at Bresler and asked him you know, is he kidding or this is the truth? And Bresler said no, this is the truth. And John Douglas said look, he called himself BTK.
Speaker 1:Belkovitz asked BTK, what's that for? He said buy, torture and kill. That's what he does to his victims. And Belkovitz nodded and he said and this BTK? He's still out there. You guys haven't caught him yet. And John Douglas replied no, we have it, but we will. So Belkovitz started laughing and he slowly started walking Douglas through BTK's various murders, describing how he would kill them Not Belkovitz, sorry.
Speaker 1:John Douglas walk Belkovitz through the murders, how he would kill them and then disappear for years at a stretch. And Belkovitz was listening and you could tell by the way his eyes locked onto John Douglas's that he was soaking up every piece of information that he was giving him. And John Douglas asked him how can this guy control his appetite like that? And after a few minutes he started trying to take Resver and Douglas through every dark, twisted corner of his sad life, sharing details he had never told anyone, confiding that he had made up all the crap about demons in order to be able to cop an insanity plea if he ever got caught. By the time Resver and John Douglas emerged from the interrogation room, their heads were spinning and they owed it all to some deranged killer and ritchit.
Speaker 1:So now Douglas started remembering that he looked at his open case. He saw the notes that he took from that meeting with the two detectives in Wichita and, together with a group of profilers and a handful of the agency's top criminologists, they listened as the men walked through the case. This time they didn't want a profile, they just wanted to see if there were any proactive techniques that they could use to flush the killer out into the open. And one idea that came to mind was that police should organize a community-wide public meeting where the BTK murders would be discussed. The purpose of the gathering, held in a location central to all the crime scenes, would be to get the unsub to attend. From his experience with many of the serial killers he had hunted in the past, he knew that their enormous egos and feeling of invincible superiority made it difficult for them to stay away from such meanings. So Douglas's plan was that investigators would currently photograph those in attendance and identify all the vehicles outside the community hall.
Speaker 1:And because John Douglas was convinced that the killer was a police buff, he suggested that an announcement should be made that the authorities were looking for potential volunteers. He said if you need should arise in the future when the police might help, they'll need help. The only requirements would be that the applicants needed their own transportation and some law enforcement training or education. The two detectives on Wichita scribbled down his suggestion. But it ate at him that there was something more than could be done, something altogether new. So Douglas goes to his office. He started looking in his files for BTK, any information about BTK, which he did write a profile on BTK, like in 1979. And his profile was three pages long with a cover sheet stable on top that it read the attached analysis is only as good as the information that had been provided. In addition, it may be necessary to totally change or modify this analysis if new information is developed, such as additional victims or forensic evidence or new information obtained from research. So he started looking at the words that he typed years before and it says mutable homicides, wichita.
Speaker 1:And this is what John Douglas wrote and I'm just going to read an excerpt of it. It says the murders of the BTK strangler are the result of a fantasy acted out, a fantasy where, for the first time in his life, he's in a position of importance and dominance. He is an inadequate type and nobody who, through his crimes, has placed himself into a position of importance. The BTK strangler is now as somebody who is receiving the recognition he feels as long overdue him to show his inadequacies. He is not even very original in his crimes. He must pattern himself after other notorious killers, such as the 44 caliber killer, better known as the son of Sam in New York. Much of the verbiage that the subject is using in his letters probably comes out of recent publications in detective magazines.
Speaker 1:He also said your subject is alienated, lonely and withdrawn. He will not be expected to have any lasting relationship with others and will lead to solitary existence dominated, as mentioned above, by fantasy and magical thinking. The killing is an attempt on his part to feel affection and acceptance. He will not be expected to have ever enjoyed any normal relations with women and probably has never had a normal heterosexual relationship with him. He experiences intense fear that he is not normal and therefore kills to cope with his disorder, as in an attempt to escape from his own fantasies. Then he can be expected to kill again, and to do so in a compulsive repetition of the pattern he has already established. His big thumbs will be in a position of vulnerability, one where he can totally render them helpless. His victims represent his own feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, and his own life had been disruptive.
Speaker 1:He probably comes from a background where his family was broken. He was raised by an overbearing mother who was known as being inconsistent with her discipline. His father probably left home either by marital separation or death while he was a youth. Your subject may have been raised by foster parents. Your subject was an average student in the classroom. However, he was more adept at disrupting the class by using profanity and pranks. His language and statements make them believe that he has some military experience and is, or is, a police buff. He probably has had run the ends with police in the past, such as assault or breaking and entering what is called a BNE. His involvement with a BNE will show that the items taken are worth insignificance, were more for more reason of a fetish of committing a crime that will live little evidence to investigating officers.
Speaker 1:The BTK Slamber may have a history of bourgeois activities and he may have an arrest record. For the same, he hunts his victims by selecting neighborhoods where he can peruse different homes without being detected. His victims would live in an area where, if need be, and he can have an easy escape route, such as neighborhood park, where he can secret himself to to enude the body. His killings were required, motivated and without elaborated planting. He seeks out targets of opportunity and such individuals of this type are frequently mechanically adept. They suffer from insomnia and thus would find difficult to homestead the employment. Control of himself and of his environment is essential for such a person. Although he is gaining in confidence, he is still shy, withdrawn, social, asocial and isolated. Your department must not make any sentiments. I'm trying to think how to simplify this. He also said that you know that he might suffer from insomnia, that this would find difficult to host. The employment, control of himself or his environment is essential for such a person and although he's gaining in confidence, he's still shy and withdrawn, asocial, isolated, and such persons have typically been raised in over-districted religious fashions.
Speaker 1:And then Douglas said to, referring to the cops you, your department, must not make any statements concerning the killer's mental condition. In other words, don't allow the media to label him as some psychotic killer. If they have already done so, then your best strategy would be to align yourself with the killer and the psychiatric experts. Any press releases should clearly state that he is a killer who must be a prehendant, and that he is not a psychotic animal. Extended periods between his murders may be for reasons when he was absent from the area, either as a result of military service, schooling, incarceration or mental treatment.
Speaker 1:It is not uncommon for subjects such as yours and remember, this is Douglas talking to the cops and Wigita to frequent police hangouts in an attempt to over here officers discuss in the case. Furthermore, such offenders will be at the crime scene observing detectives investigating the police and looking for clues to the homicide. All this allows the murderer to fulfill his ego and gain a feeling of super-reality. He may go so far as to telephonically contact your department and provide information relative to the crime, in other words, call the cops. And then Douglas wrote your advantage in this case is that it's very strong self-centered attitude will be his downfall. He will provide information to a friend or an acquaintance in local tavern concerning information that he knows about the case. He may even pretend to be an officer work in the case. If the BT case during the VIT police detective magazines, he is probably sent away for police badge that he carries on his person. In fact, he may even use this MO to gain admittance into the victims homes and he probably flashes his badge whenever opportunity lends himself, for example paying for a drink in a tavern. His egocentricity keeps him in your city and he will probably kill again.
Speaker 1:So after John Douglas read his report, he refreshes memory of what he wrote years ago. The first thing that came to his mind was you know these cops and wish it had done everything right. They have interviewed thousands of people. They have tracked down countless potential suspects, including a former police officer, none of whom turned out to be the right person. For the past four months, the departments recently assembled task force composed of six detectives, has sifted through the mountains of old case files that had accumulated over the past, the the last decade, familiarizing themselves with every convoluted twist and turn the case taken.
Speaker 1:But one thing was certain their suspect was in the driver's seat. And not only that, he had grown smarter with every kill and seemed to enjoy toying with the police. Btk was how he seemed to define so much of what he took for granted about several killers. The one thing different that he knew about him now that he did in 1979, was that three months after the Otero homicides, he had been responsible for the messy, nearly botched murder of Catherine Bright. Catherine O'Cathy Bright's brother, kevin, who miraculously survived the attack despite being shot twice in the face, described how his sister's killer attempted to convince them that he was a fugitive. He would, of course, need to tie them up because BTK told them, but all he really wanted was some food, money and their car keys. Then he had been on his way.
Speaker 1:Dennis Wather lived only a short distance from Kathy and Kevin and had no intention of leaving them unarmed. Having a living witness provide a first-hand account of the killer's technique for coming and lolling his potential victims and to allowing him to tie them up and gave them a priceless bit of insight into how the suspect carried out his crimes. His homicides were difficult to pitch in home because they possessed elements of both organization and disorganization. He was a control freak who came prepared after arriving at the homes of the victims with rope, gags and guns and knife. But he didn't use force to convince his victims to go along with him. He used basically nothing. He pretended to be a relatively harmless thug, using words to manipulate his victims and to allowing themselves to be tied up, usually without any struggle. But he also left some things to chance. If his intended victim wasn't available, he would strike the next best target he could find.
Speaker 1:On several occasions it appeared he had difficulty controlling his victims and he was hardly the neatest killer that John Douglas have encountered, because he left behind semen near the bodies of two of his kills. Then there was his peculiar way of posing his victims and he prepped and preen the bodies in exotic positions, clothing and bindings as as fuel for his masturbatory fantasies. But he had also laid out and displayed nearly all the bodies of his victims, except for Kathy Bright, who died of stab wounds. For the investigators who arrived at his crime scenes long after he had fled, it was a sea position to corpses, the way of florist Maya ranch flowers. He wanted to shock, yet his visual statements were also fairly tame and modest, at least in terms of the work that he has seen sociopathic serial killers leave behind, compared to those maniacs who left severed heads propped up on TV sets or the victim's spread ego on the floor with various objects inserted into the vaginas or rectums. The the subs was downright juvenile and soft core, but nevertheless he uses victims as inanimate props, posing them to resemble a scene out of the pages of a detective magazine, leaving them out in the open so that the first person to discover the body will practically trip over it when entering the room of the front door of the victim's house.
Speaker 1:Without a doubt, btk was a sadist who inflicted horrible, unfathomable horrors upon his victims, and yet he also deferred from all the other sexual sadists that John Douglas study. These were men who needed to inflict physical torture in order to be sexually satisfied. But BTK was different because he got off by employing a form of torture that was predominantly mental, not physical. Although he seemed obsessed with physical torture, it wasn't part of what's referred to as his signature, which is what a killer must do to satisfies him himself psychologically. Btk's signature was bondage, not physical torture. Btk never penetrated any of his victims. It would have been easy to interpret this type of behavior as though they were trying to say that you're not even good enough for me to rape, but I knew better. So his decision to not rape his victims or engage in necrophilia actually told Douglas that, despite BTK's sexual obsessions, deep inside his mind he felt hopelessly inadequate. His opinion of himself was so low and his fear of women so great that he could never bring himself to thrust himself so intimately into any of his victims. They were used purely as props. Masturbation was the only sexual activity he enjoyed during his binding torture and killing.
Speaker 1:So John Douglas started thinking of the suspect as a boy and he imagined him learning his craft as a peeping town. If nothing else, this youthful pastime gave him a priceless crash course in surveillance technique. Monitoring and studying his victims were absolutely crucial to him. He seemed to love the thrill of the hunt probably even more than the actual killings. By the time he actually did strike, he would spend so much time fantasizing over what he intended to do to his victims that he had convinced himself that he controlled every aspect of their environment. As for his victims, he chose them based on both planning and spur of the moment opportunity. He intended victims to be available when the overpowering urge to kill struck, and if they were not, then he moved on to another target.
Speaker 1:And there was something else. According to Douglas, judging from the way he managed to keep his crime scene so relatively free of fingerprints and other incriminated evidence, he was an extremely well-organized person, someone fixated on detail. Inwardly, he was an insecure, self-hating wreck. Outwardly, however, he exuded a pompous attitude that make it appear as though he possessed a grandiose opinion of himself. It was another one of his crazy, sick paradoxes. Another thing that John Douglas found interesting was the communications that he sent police over the years. From the language he used, he was obviously both fascinated by cop or subculture and investigative procedure and quite familiar with them. He was convinced that he was either employing some form of law enforcement, probably low down in rank or status like a security guard or parking violation officer, or just got off dreaming about the power such a job could bestow on him.
Speaker 1:As is often the case with serial killers, his slayings were the most important on the takings of his life, because otherwise he would be empty existence with meaning. So from his letters it seemed obvious that he was a celebrity and he could become addicted to seeing his crimes written about in the newspaper and discuss on TV. Although he had killed men and children, it seemed obvious that women were his primary targets, but John Douglas believed that deep down he loaded women. Whatever conflicts he had had with them, as well as society, were released through the emergency committed Within his troubled mind. He took no responsibility for his actions. He was clearly in some state of depression, unable to genuinely love or be loved. His life was one in which he must seek out excitement and drama in order to feel alive. And although he was able to put a good front to others, the world he lived for and lived in had nothing to do with reality. He was based purely on the statistics fantasies inside his brain.
Speaker 1:By his own admission, btk took trinkets from the house of his victims. He used them as fuel for his fantasies. He felt confident that they were one of the few things that quieted his head, which is why he needed to collect and preserve the trophies of his conquest. Taking from his crime scenes, having put a person of possession of his victims, reminded him of his glory days. And each homicide brought with it a psychological high that would quickly evaporate and always leaving him alone with his depressed thoughts and his trophies and keepsakes. No, let me rephrase this Each homicide brought with a psychological high that would quickly evaporate, always leaving him alone with his depressed thoughts. His trophies and keepsakes no doubt prove a bit more effective in keeping the depression away.
Speaker 1:And then there was a question that stumped Douglas and everybody else why have so many years lapsed since his last murder? So was it because he had picked up some unrelated charge and was now in prison cell? Was he in a mental institution? Could the police have gotten too close to him during one of the various phases after investigation? Maybe they even interviewed him as a potential suspect and the experience might have proved too unnerving for this otherwise unflappable social path. Someone as sick and dangerous as BTK would stop killing only when he is killed or gets locked behind bars. So John Douglas's research had proven to him that this is the only way to win with these guys, because rehabilitation is like a fairy tale. So now we're going to see. How is that John Douglas is going to start trying to put the dots, or connect the dots, of this mess that right now is BTK, and the hunt will continue next week. Thank you for listening to the Murderbook. Have a nice week, I should say.